ON SITE IN JOHANNESBURG:
THE GLOBAL PEOPLE'S FORUM
A SUSTAINABLE WORLD IS POSSIBLE

Civil Society Gathering parallel to the UN summit
Date: August 19 to September 4
Venue: NASREC Expo Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
Web: http://www.worldsummit.org.za

At the Global People's Forum, thousands of representatives from Civil Society gathered to exchange ideas, develop common perspective and positions and make their concerns heard all over the world. The Global People's Forum was a forum and space for all forms of Civil Society, but pulling to the fore those involved in social and environmental change processes like the landless people, anti-globalisation and human rights groups or environmental organisations.

The opening cerenmony took place on August 23, although there were several pre-summits before that date -- in order to finalise the agendas for some of the nine major groups. The first three days of the Forum dealt with crosscutting issues under the theme of ‘Building Social Movements for Sustainable Development’ and took the form of a political event, which involved key speakers to lead debates. The three following days covered Governance and Self-determination, Globalisation and Poverty Eradication. Following were seven days of thematic workshops on: Human Security, Food Security, Trade and Economics, Financing Development, Science and Technology, Health and Education, and Environment.

The Heinrich Boell Foundation organised quite a few events at the Global People's Forum. The Foundation had its own venue, the "Boell Forum", where most of our activities during the summit took place. Click here for details.

Note that there were many additional activities by Civil Society outside the venues of the Global People's Forum, such as the Peoples Earth Summit or the Corporate Accountability Week.